In the past, refrigeration systems intended for installation in refrigeration vehicles for ground transportation of frozen foods et cetera and providing cooling of the inside of their refrigeration storage compartments, have been known in the art. In one such refrigeration system, its compressor is driven by electric power generated by the power of a drive engine of the refrigeration vehicle.
However, the problem with this case is that upon the turning off of the drive engine, the compressor, too, is brought to a stop. As a result, the temperature of the inside of the refrigeration storage compartment increases. There is a refrigeration vehicle made up of a powered vehicle (trailer head) having a driver's cabin, and a cargo-carrying platform vehicle (trailer) carrying thereon a refrigeration storage compartment. The trailer head and the trailer are configured such that they are detachable from each other. In this refrigeration vehicle, the powered vehicle is provided with a drive engine and the cargo-carrying platform vehicle is provided with a refrigeration system. This produces the problem that the compressor is nevertheless brought to a stop when the cargo-carrying platform vehicle is detached from the powered vehicle, for example, for switching to a different powered vehicle.
In order to cope with these problems, there is proposed a refrigeration system (see, for example, Japanese Patent Document JP-A-H05 (1993)-38933). That is, the cargo-carrying platform vehicle (trailer) is equipped with a separate refrigerator engine from the vehicle drive engine so that the compressor is driven by the refrigerator engine. To sum up, the refrigeration system can be continuously kept in operation on the side of the cargo-carrying platform vehicle even when the drive engine is turned off or the cargo-carrying platform vehicle is detached from the powered vehicle.